


Time will one day end it.

by McG



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: A post-episode exploration of character in three acts, Episode: s06e02 Generation of Vipers, Insight into the lives of the most minor characters, M/M, Multi, what am I even doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23946079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McG/pseuds/McG
Summary: After the events of Generation of Vipers, Sebastian has nothing: no girlfriend, no job, no money. But he leans on his friend Charlie, fellow recording-shakespeare-fan, for support.
Relationships: Sebastian Dromgoole/Charlie Stephenson, Sebastian Dromgoole/random girls, Sebastian Dromgoole/random guys
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	Time will one day end it.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greenapricot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/gifts).



> Content warning: attractive idiots making unwise decisions about their sex lives. 
> 
> If your girlfriend gets murdered, you should probably see a grief counsellor, not just drink and shag your way through the rest of the year.

\--- ACT ONE ---

Charlie almost didn't answer the phone when he saw it was an unknown number. But then, all this stuff with Briony getting killed, and Sebastian being taken in for questioning…

It was a police constable, sitting with Sebastian at the hospital, and could Charlie come and collect him? 

Well, that was a turn up for the books. He and Sebastian weren't exactly close friends. They'd never really spoken apart from the odd exchange in a seminar, before Charlie had responded to the open audition call for Sebastian's "recording all of Shakespeare" plan. And sure they'd hung out a lot these past few months, but always in a group. In fact Charlie had got the distinct impression that he was beneath Sebastian's notice - no money, no influence, no _connections_. 

When he got to the hospital, and saw the state Sebastian was in, it occurred to Charlie that perhaps it was because of his insignificance that Sebastian had chosen him, of all people, to call. 

Frankly, he looked a mess. 

Battered and bruised, eyes red from crying. Yet still infuriatingly attractive, despite the misery, and despite Charlie knowing exactly how much of an arse he could be. 

"You called?" he asked, approaching Sebastian, sitting on a bench outside the main door to A&E. A uniformed police officer hovered next to him, looking bored. 

"They said I needed someone to take me home." Sebastian explained. "And I didn't know who else to call." 

The police officer gave them a lift, dropping them both off at Beaumont, but it was Charlie's room they went to. He busied himself making tea, the illicit kettle in his room proving as essential as ever. Sebastian sat on the edge of the bed and watched him, saying nothing. 

He only spoke after he'd taken his first sip of tea. 

"Can I stay with you tonight?" Sebastian asked.

"Course you can." Charlie told him. He had no idea what had happened beyond Briony's death, and no particular wish to babysit some grieving posh boy, but he could hardly say no in the circumstances. 

They sat in awkward silence, sipping the tea, the background noise of fellow students from outside, and the occasional door banging in elsewhere in the stair. 

Apropos of nothing, Sebastian took both empty mugs, placed them out of harm's way, and then immediately crowded into Charlie's space, kissing him, hands working on his belt buckle. 

"Hey! Hey, what are you doing?" Charlie demanded, pushing him off and scrabbling away. 

"You said I could stay," Sebastian defended. 

"Yeah, to sleep, because you're sad and whatever. Not because I want a shag. Jesus! What is wrong with you?!" 

Sebastian deflated at that, sinking down into the bed, and tugging at the duvet cover. 

"I don't want to be alone," he admitted quietly. 

Charlie sighed and sat down next to him, slinging an arm around his shoulders and pulling him into a hug. 

"You can stay. Of course you can stay."

Somehow apparently Charlie had been upgraded to Sebastian's best friend, and he wasn't entirely certain if he wanted the job. 

\---

Charlie found himself agreeing to go with Sebastian to Briony's funeral. Her parents lived in a village near Northampton, and she was to be buried in the village churchyard. Her parents had especially wanted to include Sebastian. And Sebastian desperately didn't want to go, but really, he'd cost them their daughter, there was no way he could go against their wishes now. 

Charlie hired a car to drive them. 

After the service, Mrs Keagan invited Sebastian to join the immediate family at the graveside for the burial. The rest of the mourners trickled slowly out of the church and started to head back towards the Keagan's house. An uncle, in charge of ushering, was giving out directions for the short walk through the village.

Charlie spotted a tall blond figure that he wasn't expecting, and followed. 

"You're the policeman." he said, catching up with him as he stopped for a cigarette in the church car park, leaning against a silver BMW. 

Hathaway considered him for a moment. 

"Sergeant Hathaway. James. You were at the recording studio."

"Charlie Stephenson." held out his hand, and Hathaway shook it, "I'm chaperoning Sebastian. Briony's family invited him. He didn't want to come."

"Why not?"

"He blames himself." 

Hathaway nodded, thoughtfully. 

"Been friends with him long?" he asked. 

Charlie laughed. 

"Friends? No. I was always beneath his notice, really. I'm not a useful person to know. Just some lower middle class child of teachers. Sebastian likes his friends to be people of note." 

"And yet none of them are here now?"

Charlie watched him carefully for a moment, and then glanced over towards the graveyard. The silhouettes of the family still clustered round the grave, heads bowed while the vicar spoke. Too far away to hear anything.

"He's always talked big. But I'm pretty sure it's all an act. Gives the impression of having rich parents, but he doesn't talk about them or to them as far as I can tell. They're certainly not sending him any money. I had to lend him some for a new phone."

Hathaway raised an eyebrow. 

"Does he talk much about Renton?" he asked, after a moment. 

"Not anymore. Used to all the time - he liked to tell us that Renton was his patron. For our worthy artistic endeavour. Personally, I thought the man was a manipulative dick, who was desperately trying to reclaim his lost youth. But what do I know."

"You met him?"

"He used to take us out for drinks sometimes. Always bars and cocktails and shots. I'm more of a quiet pint in the pub, and a bag of chips on the way home sort of person myself, so I can't say I was impressed." 

"Renton was paying him money. On top of his wages. Random amounts, at different times. Paid his accommodation for this academic year as well." 

"Well, he was paying for the recording studio time."

"That went directly to them. This was on top of it."

"You think there was something dodgy going on? Is this you pumping me for information?"

Hathaway shook his head. 

"Strictly off the record. I thought Sebastian was a supercilious little worm when I first met him. But having interviewed Renton...He had quite a lot of control over him. Power and influence might be things Sebastian was looking for, but I get the impression he was in over his head there."

Charlie considered this for a moment. 

"You think he was fucking Renton?" he finally asked. 

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Hathaway told him, but the look he gave Charlie was definitely trying to convey meaning. 

Charlie leant back on the wall and considered this. 

"I don't think he knows how to have a relationship that isn't transactional." he said after a while. "I don't mean just romantically or whatever. All his friendships. They're all about what's on offer - what you can get out of it. Even with Briony...I do think he loved her, but their interaction always seemed a bit performative. Maybe it was different behind closed doors, but…" he shrugged. 

Hathaway finished his cigarette and dropped the butt, grinding it with his shoe. 

"I should go," he fished in his suit pocket and produced a card, handing it over, "if you ever need help. With Sebastian. You can call me."

Charlie didn't tell Sebastian about the conversation, or mention that Hathaway was at the funeral. But later, when they'd driven back to Oxford and were safely ensconced in Charlie's flat, and Sebastian pushed Charlie down onto the bed and kissed him, Charlie went along with it. 

It was a spectuacularly bad idea, he knew. But Sebastian was handsome, and willing, and so completely fragile...who was he to deny that?

\---

Two months after Briony was killed, Charlie borrowed the deposit money from his parents, and the two of them moved into a flat, and Sebastian had his birthday, all in the same week. The flat was a dingy 2-bed, on the top floor of a converted house in Jericho. But for all Charlie was working 40 hour weeks all summer, he needed to still be able to afford the rent when term started in the autumn and he had to cut his hours in order to study.

Sebastian was determined that they celebrate, and so Charlie found himself sitting in the corner of a crowded bar at 1am with some random girl, while Sebastian was off dancing with her friend. 

"Just so you know, I'm not looking for a boyfriend," she yelled in his ear, over the top of the music. 

"Well that makes one of us," he yelled back. 

The girl, Sophy, frowned, not quite catching his meaning. 

"I'm gay," he clarified. "So not going to try and hit on you, don't worry." 

Sebastian decided there needed to be an afterparty, of all things. Back in the flat Charlie made tea for himself and Sophy, while they played music and pretended not to hear any of the giggles or thumps coming from Sebastian's room. And when it got to 3am and there was no sign of Sophy's friend emerging, he found her a sleeping bag and a spare pillow to get settled on the sofa. So it must have been gone four o'clock when Charlie was woken by Sebastian crawling into bed with him, mashing his face into Charlie's shoulder, sobbing. 

"I miss her," he admitted. 

Charlie tucked the duvet around him and held him close, making shushing noises as Sebastian cried himself to sleep. Another couple of hours after that when Charlie awoke with his dick in Sebastian's mouth, he tugged at Sebastian's hair with one hand, urging him on, while the other he had over his own face to muffle the sounds as he came. 

Both girls were gone by the time they emerged the following morning. 

\---

\--- ACT TWO ---

Throughout the summer and into the start of Michaelmas term, they'd settled into a routine. In between lectures and seminars for his MA, Charlie would work at the same indie coffee shop he'd been at since the previous year. Assignments were completed late into the evenings and on weekends if he wasn't working. Sebastian was working at Costa in the mornings and lunchtimes, and as a waiter in a mid-range chain restaurant in the evenings. 

When their evenings off coincided, then they went out drinking. Sometimes Sebastian would find some sparkling girl, or some impressionable boy to bring home. Sometimes he didn't, and he'd crawl into bed with Charlie instead, pushing him back into the pillows and kissing him with such intensity that Charlie didn't have the heart to argue. 

It was after such a night, when wonderfully neither of them had an early start, that Charlie found himself lying in bed next to Sebastian, the weak morning sun casting a slice of slight through a gap in the curtains, which cut across Sebastian's bare back. 

He traced paterns along the edge of it, carressing the smooth skin and relevelling in the luxury of the lie in. Sebastian made a sleepy noise and attempted to burrow further into the pillows, not yet willing to be awake. 

"We really shouldn't keep doing this," Charlie murmured, reluctantly acknowledging the faint sense of guilt he felt each time they woke up like this. 

"Why not? S'a free country," Sebastian mumbled in reply. 

"What are you even doing with me?" Charlie asked. "You could have anyone you wanted."

"Not any more I couldn't." Sebastian told him. "Besides, I have to keep you sweet so you'll let me keep living here." 

Charlie tutted and poked Sebastian in the ribs. 

"Don't talk crap. You pay half of the bills." 

"It's your name on the contract," Sebstian pointed out. "You can kick me to the kerb anytime you like." 

Charlie tensed, the idle chatter having taken a worrying turn. 

"You really think that? You think I'm only keeping you here because, what, you're willing to suck my dick? Fuck's sake, Sebastian." 

"Why else would you put up with me?" 

"Ok, several things," Charlie sat up, pulling the duvet around himself and wishing he wasn't having this conversation naked. "First off, even if I hated you, I can't afford the rent on my own." 

"You could find someone to replace me easy enough." Sebastian countered. 

"And secondly, I thought we were friends now?" 

"We are," Sebastian shrugged. "And if I want it to stay that way, I have to make sure I don't piss you off."

"That is beyond fucked up," Charlie snapped, climbing out of bed and gathering up his clothes. 

He left the flat and spent the next couple of hours walking through Port Meadow, most of the way to Wolvercote. By the time he got back, Sebastian was nowhere to be found. The calender pinned up in their tiny kitchen said he was at work, but Charlie was worried he wouldn't come back. He thought about calling to check Sebastian had arrived for his shift, but he didn't want to Sebastian to know he was checking up on him. Instead he whiled away the hours failing to concentrate on his latest assignement, and idly planning out what he'd do if Sebastian had gone missing. 

The card Sergeant Hathaway had given him still lurked in his wallet. He hoped he wouldn't have to use it. 

Sebastian finally breezed in at the usual time, and Charlie couldn't help a sigh of relief. 

"Please don't leave," he said, the second Sebastian walked through the door. 

Sebastian frowned at him.

"I have to get changed and go to other work in, like, an hour." he pointed out, nonplussed. 

"No, I mean, don't move out." Charlie told him. "We're still friends. I still want you to live here." 

Sebastian considered him for a moment and then finally agreed with a nod, ducking into his bedroom to get changed. 

Things stayed broadly the same after that. They still both worked all the hours they could, meeting the rent and the bills and saving up whatever was left over. They still went out drinking if they had the evening off. But Sebastian stopped bringing home bright young things and gravitated towards older men. He never brought them back to the flat, but rather would disappear off with them, abandoning Charlie with little more than a grin and a _don't wait up…_

Charlie didn't feel he could really complain. It was up to Sebastian who he slept with. The hot twist in his guts wasn't anything to do with jealousy, he convinced himself. Merely a healthy concern for a friend. Whoever these men were, they saw Sebastian's act - the confidence and the charm - and they thought that it was all true. But Charlie knew that Sebastian was fragile, and he worried every time, that Seb might be in over his head. 

\---

\--- ACT THREE --- 

"What are you doing for Christmas?" Charlie asked one morning at the end of November. 

Sebastian was nestled in the corner of the sofa with a blanket, a mug of tea, and playing with the brand new iPhone 5 he'd bought himself the previous day. It'd only been out a couple of months, and Charlie wondered where he'd got the money to buy it. It was feasible that he'd saved up for it - working two jobs meant he always had a bit more spare cash than Charlie did - but he worried all the same. 

Sebastian looked up at him bewildered. 

"I don't know." 

"Are you working?" 

"Christmas Eve maybe. They're both closed Christmas Day. Rota's not out til next week."

"I told my Mum I didn't think you had plans - she wants me to invite you to join us."

"Oh. Why?"

"Because it's Christmas, and you shouldn't spend it alone…?"

Sebastian looked thoughtful for a moment. 

"I'm getting the train after work on the 23rd," Charlie continued. "Not sure when I'm coming back yet - I'm waiting to hear on my shifts." 

"I'll find out when I'm working and let you know?" 

"Excellent." 

\---

They got the train together in the early evening on the 23rd. 

"What are your parents like?" Sebastian asked, half an hour into their journey. 

"Nice, I suppose." Charlie said. "They met when they did teacher training. Dad teaches Geography, Mum's a Special Needs coordinator for the education authority." 

"My dad was an investment banker. My mum was his mistress," Sebastian shared. "We used to have Christmas with my nan and grandad, and Nan would make sarcastic comments about Mum not being married."

Later that night, after Sebastian had pleaded tiredness and taken himself off to the camp bed wedged into Charlie's childhood room, Charlie sat in a wicker chair in the conservatory, nursing a glass of whisky, a blanket wrapped around him to ward off the chill of the cold glass room. 

His mum joined him, sitting in the chair opposite, a blanket of her own and a glass of wine. 

"Sebastian is very charming," she observed. 

"Yep,"

"Is he trying a bit too hard?" 

"Yep," Charlie grinned, "He feels awkward about gatecrashing family Christmas, the charm is his way of compensating." 

"You two are close?" she asked. 

Charlie was quiet for a moment, watching the neighbour's cat as it made its way across their garden. 

"We're not together," he finally answered. 

"But?" 

"He's had a tough time of it. He's fragile - more so than he wants people to think. More than he even realises, maybe." 

"You like him." A statement, not a question. 

"Yeah. He's an arrogant arse. He can be self destructive. He makes terrible life choices. And yet..." 

"It's not your job to fix him."

"No one else is stepping up to do it. Least of all him." 

"You know you can't change him?" 

"Yeah. I know." 

"I just don't want you to get hurt, love."

"I know, Mum. But I think it's too late." 

\---

"Your family were nice," Sebatian said on New Year's Eve. 

They were back in Oxford, and they'd clambered out of the velux window in Sebastian's room onto the roof, with blankets and a bottle of prosecco, ready to watch the fireworks across the city as it turned midnight. 

"Mum thinks you're very charming." 

"Good to know I haven't lost my touch." he refilled both their glasses and then continued, "I've been thinking." 

"Oh?"

"About this last year, and next year and what I want to be different." 

"Well that is traditional." 

"This time last year I was at some party with Renton, off my face and thinking I owned the world. We missed everyone celebrating midnight because we were fucking in someone's en suite."

"Lucky we don't have an en suite here then."

"I don't think I'm a very nice person,"

"You have your moments."

"I keep fucking random strangers. I'm always hungover. I work two jobs I hate and I don't know what for, and I'm an absolute dick to you half the time, when you're the only friend I've got."

"Alright, you can be a bit of a bastard I suppose."

" _I am bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valor, in everything illegitimate._ " Sebastian quoted in reply.

"Oh, and you're an insufferable Shakespeare nerd," Charlie added, grinning. 

"I want to finish the project," Sebastian admitted. 

"Recording the plays?" 

"Yeah. I talked to Dave, at the studio. He reckons he can do me a cheap rate."

"That sounds good."

"I also talked to him about working there. He thinks I can do an apprenticeship. Sound technician. And then I can go and work in a theatre somewhere. Actually do a job I enjoy." 

"That sounds really good, Sebastian."

Sebastian tipped his head back and sighed dramatically, 

"Me, with my first class honours from Oxford University, doing an apprencticeship," he declared, flippant and exasperated; amused by the contrast.

"You are such a fucking snob." Charlie told him, without heat. 

"I really am," Sebastian laughed. Suddenly lighter, happier now that he'd shared his plans. 

Sebastian rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand and reaching out for Charlie with the other one. A palm on his cheek, thumb tracing Charlie's bottom lip.

"Thank you," he murmured, leaning in and kissing Charlie, "For putting up with me." 

"Seb," Charlie warned, pulling back, "You don't owe me anything." he reminded. 

"I know," Sebastian kissed him again, "But I've been making New Year's Resolutions," he explained. "And I've resolved to stop fucking random strangers. Because I think I should be fucking you instead."

"Romance isn't dead, then." Charlie laughed. 

"I'm serious. I'm trying to be a better person now. And I like you; I think we should date." 

Charlie finally caved, kissing him back. 

"This is probably a terrible idea," he murmured, pushing Sebastian onto his back in the nest of blankets and climbing on top of him. 

"I think it's genius," Sebastian countered, tangling his own leg around Charlie's and pulling him closer, as all around them the fireworks went off. 

\---

**Author's Note:**

> Charlie is a real character, played by Josh O'Connor: though the only lines he gets are the tiny snippet of the play he's recording when Lewis and Hathaway first visit the recording studio. 
> 
> This story stemmed from speculating about Sebastian's life, and the role his friends have in it. And also because Freddie Fox is pretty when he's sad, and I'm obsessed with Josh O'Connor... 
> 
> The title and the quote Sebastian uses somewhere near the end are both from Troilus and Cressida.


End file.
